i do raw in the summer, and even in winter try to include daily green smoothies at least. it really makes me feel fantastic.i can't stand the gourmet raw, don't have access to the fancy stuff (or a dehydrator), and don't really like nuts, so for me it's mostly fruits and veggies and sprouts. There are other good forums and places- be careful with 30 bananas, which is kind of incendiary, and goneraw, which is the haven of neo-paleo people and other interesting types.rawfoodtalk is not so badrawfoodrehab is nice and very acceptingrawfreedomcommunity has low traffic but good recipes and a place solely devoted to freebies you can downloadalso giveittomeraw has a decent forum and space where raw blogs are compiled.

I so want to try this for a week or two, but I am feeling stymied by the recipes, and I know I will get bored if I eat only salad. I have a bunch of books from the library and am loving the recipes from Judita's Going Raw. Anyone else like this book? I would love some meal plans--like stuff you would eat in a regular day. Like what thisheregiragge posted on the first page of this thread, but maybe with more ideas? I own a dehydrator, but will go coo coo if I have to plan what i eat a week in advance so it has time to dry.

_________________Cake Maker to the Starspakupaku"Stupid society. I'm gonna go put on bikini kill."~Susie Tofu Monster"Kittee is wise. Listen to Kittee."~Aruna--> the PPKr currently known as mumbaikar

Hey Kittee, I've been mostly raw for about a week or so now and feeling good. I've tried in the past but it's never really stuck like this, I think because I saw it as something you had to be 100% all about, this time round I'm just falling into it naturally, craving fruit, veg and green juice. I made a lasanga and had a hot choc on soy tonight but everything else has actually been raw lately, which is a surprise (well pretty much raw, I use condiments and such that aren't). I think you can't force yourself to eat this way, you've just got to feel it intuitively. For raw books I like Becoming Raw and Jennifer Cornbleet's 'Raw food made easy'. I also have Ani Phyo's Raw Food Kitchen which has a few gems in it. If anyone is interested, Russell James is also currently offering all his ebooks for $10 on his website http://therawchef.com/therawchefblog/. His stuff is a bit more involved and I don't have a dehydrator, but there's some good stuff in there for that price.

My days lately have looked like:Brekkie: Green juice and chia pudding

Snack: bowl of fruit

Lunch: Big salad of mixed greens, maybe with some nut pate or a 'burger' type thing

Dinner: Zucchini noodles with different sauces (I do have a spiraliser, although I did it before with a veggie peeler)

Other meals I've had include: a raw pad thai dish; green smoothies; sushi (with nut pate in place of the rice, although next time I might try something else); buckwheat muesli I bought from the farmers market

I've tried having raw days every now and then, but as a start, living at home by family freak and get all, "That's rabbit food, you're starving yourself!" And secondly, I can last all day up to dinner. By the evening I just crave redwoods sausages and mustard mash potato or something equally un-raw. It seems the more raw I eat, the more I crave processed food. Withdrawal stages I guess!

A few questions for more experienced raw-fooders:

How do you get enough protein? Sprouted beans?All that sugar in fruit- bad for you/teeth? (I know fruit is spiffy for you generally, but still, I eat huge amounts when having raw mornings.)Similar thing, acid/teeth? I have terrible enamel. Lastly (silly I know) anyone else get bored of salad? I love gourmet raw recipes (I'm a big foodie) but my blender is shocking, and I don't anything fancier than a potato peeler.

The WHO recommends 5% of calories from protein. They consider 2.5% to be the safe minimum, and then double it to 5% to be really really safe. Breast milk contains about 6% of calories from protein. So, 6% is sufficient protein for when we grow most rapidly – enough to triple a baby's weight in a year.

Diets in which more than 10% of calories from animal protein and/or soy protein turn on cancer. Americans average 16% protein, and 75% of that protein is from animals. It's easy to see why Americans are so sick. (The China Study is an excellent book and explains this in detail.)

So, you want to get 5-10% of your calories from protein. Fruit supplies 4-8% protein. The greens and other veggies we commonly eat raw average 10-30%. I get most of my calories from fruit, and then eat maybe 200-400 calories from greens/veggies each day. That gives me around 7% of calories from protein, without any effort at all.

Peacefully wrote:

All that sugar in fruit- bad for you/teeth? (I know fruit is spiffy for you generally, but still, I eat huge amounts when having raw mornings.) Similar thing, acid/teeth? I have terrible enamel.

My teeth have never felt better or looked better. I no longer have the sensitivity, staining, or yellow buildup that I had even during 4+ years as a cooked vegan.

I would suggest minimizing lemon juice. I used it as a salad dressing for years. I cut it out as an experiment, and when I reintroduced it, my teeth didn't feel as good. Now I use it only occasionally.

Peacefully wrote:

Lastly (silly I know) anyone else get bored of salad? I love gourmet raw recipes (I'm a big foodie) but my blender is shocking, and I don't anything fancier than a potato peeler.

The key for me is really great, fresh lettuce. Bagged (even organic bagged romaine hearts) is just never anything near as good as the real thing from a good farm. It should be sweet and pleasantly tasting with next to no bitterness. You should be able to eat it straight and enjoy it, rather than wanting to cover it up in dressing or with other flavors. My favorites are romaine, red and green leaf, iceburg, butterhead, and all the related varieties like forellenschluss (aka "freckles").

My favorite salad lately is lettuce with lots of chopped tomatoes, nectarines, and orange pieces. Purslane, spinach, cilantro/chives/basil would be good in there too. You can make great cucumber or zucchini noodles with your peeler to mix in or instead of the lettuce.

I'm really interested in eating more raw food. I'm going to try to leave most of my veggies uncooked (except for things like sweet potatoes), but I'll probably have a bit of rice now and then. I found a recipe for raw almond pesto and marinated mushrooms that look really good. I'm making a grocery list as I type. XDI think I'll hold off sprouts though - for now anyway. My local health food store sells a sprouter thing.

_________________My brother had a beehive in Ithaca, and a bear destroyed it.He has a new beehive now, but this one has hurtful anti-bear epithets scrawled all over it.And that's why I don't eat honey.

to follow up on the salad is boring thing- i have been working my way through recipe books to build my repertoire.... summer is coming here (winter is almost gone) and i will go raw again soon, and my daughter is interested, so i have some additional momentum.a good book with salad "extras" and sauces, despite its old-timey hippie ambience, is Raw Food for Busy People, and it can be found online with some minimal searching. It is from before superfoods and maca, and most recipes don't need equipment.

_________________My brother had a beehive in Ithaca, and a bear destroyed it.He has a new beehive now, but this one has hurtful anti-bear epithets scrawled all over it.And that's why I don't eat honey.

I'm glad Ani Phyo isn't the go-to for raw! I bought her book recently, and while some of the smoothies are okay (and will be better when I get a better blender), the amount of nuts are kind of scary. I've been afraid to try most of it.

_________________"So this is guilt, huh? In the past, I've always just counteracted this feeling with other emotions, like sugar or drunk."- Veronica

back in 2009 i was part of a tester group for Kris Carr's Crazy Sexy Diet. it was called the Adventure Cleanse Tune-UP (ACT). anyways...i chose to do 80% raw and 20% cooked (staying raw for breakfasts and morning snacks. then 80/20 for the rest of the day). it was amazing and awesome and i never felt better. i'd make a green juice & a smoothie for breakfast, a big salad with lots of rock'n toppings for lunches, and then try and keep it 80% raw and 20% cooked for dinner, too. i need to get back to it. i feel off the wagon and haven't felt as awesome since. i miss it and i need to get my butt in gear.

i was very into 80/10/10, 30bananasaday and the whole low fat raw veganism for a long time. It messed me up so badly.

I felt great at first on 100% 80/10/10rv, but in the long run it caused me a lot of problems, also. I would not suggest anyone do more than a month at 100% (even if you have your best month ever), and then reintroduce clean cooked foods like quinoa, winter squash, sweet potatoes, increased amount of avocado, etc.

I've been following the youtube videos of a lot of those LFRV people for a year or so & gradually going more that way myself, because I find them pretty convincing based on their health results & physiques. I have to admit that I find some of the 30 bananas a day forum posts a bit wacky, and it doesn't seem to be a diet that makes you look younger than your years, even if you are fit. I'm curious to hear about it from people on this forum who've tried as it's usually presented as a fight between 'paleo' vs 80/10/10 if anyone disagrees. On this forum, not every problem is due to 'detox'!

Um, basically I got so many gallbladder stones they had to remove my gallbladder. Now, there are several ways to get gallbladder stones and - surprise, suprise - one of them is not eating enough fat.

Now I have a super hard time getting full after 80/10/10 because I ate huge portions then. I crave sugar nonstop and didn't use to. oH and also: while on 80/10/10 I gained weight constantly. But people on the 30bananas board will always tell you "this is your body healing". Yeah... no...

_________________

lepelaar wrote:

The PPK is a mere cooking seminar for flexitarians who believe in the good of man, but might be a good resource for 3d video expertise and ready-made inhumane slaughterhouse timelines.

I'm currently doing 80 10 10, I'm two weeks down the line and so far it seems to be going fine, I've been eating around 2200 calories a day and I've lost 7lbs this time around. I tried it before, but didn't see much difference. I know realistically, for me, this is not going to be a long term thing. I am a bit concerned about switching back to cooked foods, I was eating around 1500-1800 in cooked foods and not losing. I don't know if its because I'm eating fruit or my body is just willing to let go of weight because I'm eating more.

The WHO recommends 5% of calories from protein. They consider 2.5% to be the safe minimum, and then double it to 5% to be really really safe. Breast milk contains about 6% of calories from protein. So, 6% is sufficient protein for when we grow most rapidly – enough to triple a baby's weight in a year.

Diets in which more than 10% of calories from animal protein and/or soy protein turn on cancer. Americans average 16% protein, and 75% of that protein is from animals. It's easy to see why Americans are so sick. (The China Study is an excellent book and explains this in detail.)

This is not quite right. The WHO recommends 0.83g protein/kg body weight for adults (the US RDA is 0.8g/kg, so that's not so off-base from the WHO recommendations; most nutritionists seem to suggest you should measure it by kg "ideal" body weight) and that figure is based on protein from a source as digestible as an egg or milk (which most vegan protein sources are not). They don't give recommendations in percentages of caloric intake as far as I can tell, for good reason. The percentage of your caloric intake that winds up being has to do with whether you're trying to maintain, lose, or gain weight. If you're trying to lose, it winds up being a higher percentage of total calories because your protein needs do not decrease (they continue to be based on your body weight). If you're trying to gain, the percentage goes down. It doesn't really work out this way in practice for most people, since you just eat more or less of the same kinds of foods whether you're gaining or losing, so the percentage stays the same. But, what this means is that people who are losing weight by eating significantly fewer calories and also wind up eating less protein are at risk for protein deficiency.

Infants and children need a higher ratio of protein/body weight, BUT they're also rapidly gaining weight, so the percentage of calories in the diet from protein will be lower than it is for adults. Infants get 6% of their calories from protein if they're taking in breast milk or prepared formula, but this is a meaningless figure to extrapolate from for adults because babies are simultaneously trying to drastically increase their body weight - they're getting lots of extra calories from fat and sugar that adults don't need because most of us are trying to maintain or lose weight rather than gain. They're managing to have a low percentage of calories from protein even though their protein requirements by body weight are higher (1.3+g/kg - WHO, 1.5g/kg - US RDA), simply because they are taking in huge amounts of calories for their size.

An adult woman who weighs 130 pounds needs, according to the WHO, 49g of protein a day. If she's active enough to eat 2000 calories a day and not gain weight, that works out to 10% of her calories from protein. It would be hard for me, when I was 130, to be active enough each day to eat 2000 calories and not gain. More reasonably, to maintain 130 pounds (back when I maintained such a weight), I couldn't eat over 1500 calories a day. That gives me 13% calories from protein, if I only ate 49 g a day. There's also plenty of research showing that vegans likely need a higher protein intake because our sources of protein are not as digestible or as easily utilized by the body as animal sources. If that's the case, we might need up to 10% more protein than people who get most of their protein from animal sources (see Ginny Messina at theveganrd.com for more info on this and other protein issues for vegans). There's also plenty of research at this point showing that higher protein intake is protective against osteoporosis. which makes me wary of vegans telling other vegans to eat a low protein diet. Here's what Jack Norris has to say about protein, which I think is pretty useful reading for vegans: http://veganhealth.org/articles/protein

And unfortunately, the conclusions of the China Study have not been replicated (critiques of the study abound, you can do your own googling). We still don't have a dietary cure for cancer, and a very low protein diet, even if it marginally lowered your risk for cancer, might cause other problems that are not worth the trade (like constant hunger, muscle wasting, bone issues, and others). I think a raw diet is perfectly fine for most adults (not for most children, though), but I wouldn't follow non-standard advice about how many macronutrients you need, even if following a raw diet.

WHO Report on Protein Needs wrote:

As for protein per se, this was examined in relation to breast cancer mortality in the 88 647 women covered by the Nurses Health Study (68). Since protein intakes have been associatedwith increasing circulating insulin-like growth factor-1 levels, which in turn have been reported to show a striking relation-ship with breast cancer risk among premenopausal women in the Nurses Health Study (69), an influence of dietary protein on relative risk of breast cancer might be predicted. However, no effect of total protein or of animalor vegetable protein was detected, although processed meat other than baconor sausages was shown to be associated with greater risk. A lack of significantassociation between cancer mortality and protein from animal or vegetablesources was shown in a prospective study of 29 017 women in the IowaWomen’s Health Study (70).Overall, the evidence indicates that there is little effect of total protein intakeon the incidence of cancer, but that specific foods, such as red or processedmeat, might increase the risk relative to vegetable protein sources. However,it has been reported that high dietary protein results in better survival inwomen with breast cancer (71)